SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
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The coming cashless dystopia?
Tapping with your phone, using chip and pin, paying online — it all seems so much easier than notes and coins. But nothing pushed by big tech and the financial industry giants is in our favour, argues JOHN GREEN
RUBY ALDEN GIBSON believes Scottish parliament has enough powers to curtail Westminster Labour’s savage attack on welfare
KEVIN DONNELLY reports from Monte Faudo and its annual remembrance of the region’s WWII partisan anti-fascist battles
The Trump government is seizing overseas students from their homes and campuses and even off the streets, with no legal grounds and no due process, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
As global fascism grows, ROGER McKENZIE urges the left to reclaim May Day’s revolutionary roots — not as an act of nostalgia, but as fuel for building a ‘community of resistance’ against exploitation and the rise of fascism
Our unions need to make a firm stand against so-called ‘defence spending’: the boss class say there’s no magic money tree — and there should be no magic mushroom cloud either, argues NATHAN HENNEBRY
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
MANY readers will already have experienced situations where they are unable to pay for things in cash and have to use a valid credit or debit card. Car parking is only one such transaction where having a card is almost obligatory these days, most supermarkets are changing their checkouts to cashless machines — and the new Amazon grocery shops don’t take cash at all. Many of us are now mostly shopping online and credit and debit cards are obligatory.
Even our relationship with government agencies and local authorities is now almost impossible without access to a computer and a credit card. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? If you’ve got a good credit rating and bank account, you may prefer the idea of paying by card — it’s simple and painless and you don’t have to carry a wad of cash and small change in your pocket.
We see headlines in the press, like “Customers move towards digital payments” and “Banks shutting down ATMs as people move towards digital payments” — as if everyone is just collectively acting like this, and the big institutions are just following our lead.
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